Friday, August 1, 2008

Friday Five

Friday is here and here is my Friday Five:

1. No more sleeping in for awhile. Schools starts next week but since I am a new employee to the school I have to start a few days earlier. I am ready to get back to work though because just sitting around the house is driving me crazy.

2. I was watching the Samantha Brown travel special last night about China. She went to a Giant Panda rescue place and she actually got to hold one of the pandas. I would be scared but it would also be so cool to hold a panda. I am not good with names but she also went to a city that still had the original city wall mostly intact from 5000 years ago. The city wall was to keep the attacking Mongolians out of the city. I would love to see the history of China first hand but that would be years from now for me.

3. Laurie Halse Anderson's write for 15 minutes a day challenge has ended. I will still be writing each day because I think this month really inspired me to get in that habit. I will miss her prompts for writing every day but I can think of some things on my own.

4. Monday night I had a work night with the IUSWP for our grant and writing conference next year. At first I was dreading doing all of the work that I had volunteered for but after Monday I feel better about things. It was fun to reconnect with friends. IUSWP stands for Indiana University Southeast Writing Project and it is actually one of the oldest professional development systems for teachers, not the IUS branch but Writing Project in general. Each summer teachers take a 4 week intensive class aimed at improving writing skills for students. You end up making life long friends because we write every day of the class and share our own writings. If you are a teacher or librarian you should check out the National Writing Project on the web.

5. My last item is actually a call for prayer. We need to pray over our schools as kids head back in the next weeks. A prayer of protection from violence but also a prayer that the new president will take a serious look at the No Child Left Behind Law and make the needed changes to help the students. We should really look at the candidates and see where they stand on issues like education and helping the poor. That is as political as this blog will ever get, hopefully.

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